Latter Day Pamphlets by Thomas Carlyle (1850)
(p.287-294) [av]
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[p.287]
SUMMARY
No. I. THE PRESENT TIME.
The Present ever a 'New Era' to the thinking man : To know it, and what
it bids us do, the sum of knowledge for us all. Judicial blindness. Our own days
: If not days of endless hope too, then are they days of utter despair, (p.1.)
A Reforming Pope, and the huge unreformable Popedom. The Sicilians first to follow the poor Pope's example. French exasperation and emulation. European explosion, boundless, uncontrollable : All Kings conscious they are but Playactors. A weltering mob, presided over by M. de Lamartine. A changed time since the word Senior was first devised to signify Superior. (2.)
Universal Democracy, an inevitable fact of the days we live in : Whence comes it? whither goes it? What is the meaning of it? High shouts of exultation from the universal foolish human throat; drowning for the moment all reflection whatsoever. Bankruptcy of Imposture : At all costs, it is to be prayed by all men that Shams may cease. Heavyside, and his quiet blasphemy. Democracy not a Government; nor Parliament a practical substitute for a King. Unanimity of ' voting' will do nothing for us, if the voting happen to be wrong. A divine message, or eternal regulation of the Universe, there verily is, in regard to every conceivable procedure of man. Universal Suffrage, and the Ballot-box. (7.)
The ancient Republics, now pretty well admitted to be nothing to our purpose. One modern instance of Democracy, ' nearly perfect' : The Republic of the United States. America too will have to strain her energies, in quite other fashion than this : America's Battle is yet to fight. Mere Democracy forever impossible : The Universe itself a Monarchy and Hierarchy. God Almighty's Noble in the supreme place, under penalties. Everlasting privilege of the Foolish, to be governed and glided by the Wise: Intrinsically, the harshest duty a wise man, if he be indeed wise, has laid to his hand. (16.)
The new Sacrament of Divorce, called 'enfranchisement,' 'emancipation.' West-Indian Blacks and Irish Whites : Horses and half-brothers : The fate of all emancipated Helplessness, sooner or later, tragically inevitable. British industrial existence fast becoming one huge poison-swamp of reeking pestilence : Thirty-thousand outcast, ungoverned, unguided Needlewomen. Constituted Anarchy : 'British Liberty,' and what it is doing for us. (21.)
England and her Constitution, the model of the world: At once unattainable by the world, and not worth attaining. Called a ' second time' to show the Nations how to live. England's one hope : Many Kings, not needing 'election' to command : Poor England never so needed them as now. The true 'commander' and King : Not quite discoverable by riddling of the popular clamour. The fateful Hebrew Prophecy, sounding daily through our streets. In regard to choice of men, next to no capability on the part of universal suffrage. The few Wise will have, by one method or another, to take, and to keep, com-[p.288]mand of the innumerable Foolish. (26.)
Captains of Industry: Organisation of Labour, the new strange task which no Government can much longer escape. Speech of the British Prime Minister to his Pauper Populations and the Respectable Professors of the Dismal Science. Alas, there are things that should be done, not spoken ; that till the doing of them is begun, cannot be spoken. (30.)
No. II. MODEL PRISONS.
The deranged condition of our affairs : Two ways of proceeding in regard to
them: Selfish indifference, and self- lauding philanthropy. Indiscriminate
mashing-up of Right and Wrong, ending in a Fraternity like Cain's, (p.
41.)
A London Prison of the exemplary or model kind. Certain Chartist Notabilities undergoing their term. The Captain of the place, a true aristos and commander of men. His problem, to drill twelve-hundred scoundrels to do nothing, by 'the method of kindness.' Happy Devil's regiments of the line, what soldier to any earthly or celestial Power has such lodging and attendance as you here! Certainly it should not be the Devil's regiments of the line, that a servant of God would first of all concentrate his attention on. Precisely the worst investment for Benevolence that human ingenuity could select. The highest and best investment : Solemn Shams and Supreme Quacks, riding prosperously in every thoroughfare. (44.)
Howard the Philanthropist, a sort of beatified individual : A dull practical solid man, full of English accuracy and veracity. Not the only benefactor that has worked without money for us: The Destinies opulent. Milton, Kepler, Dante. Cholera Doctors ; Soldiers : Human virtue, if we went down to the roots of it, not so rare. Woe to us, it is so seldom elaborated, and built into a result ! The Benevolent-Platform Fever, and general morbid sympathy, instead of hearty hatred, for scoundrels. Brotherhood? Be the thought far from me. Beautiful Black Peasantry, fallen idle : Interesting White Felonry, not idle. What a reflection, that we cannot bestow on an unworthy man any particle of our 'benevolence,' without withdrawing it from one to whom it of right belongs ! One thing needful for the world ; but that one indispensable : Give us Justice, and we live ; give us only counterfeits or succedanea, and we die. Modern ghastly Phantasm of Christianity, which they sing litanies to at Exeter Hall and elsewhere. Poor old Genius of Reform, and his Program of a new Era. (53.)
Christian Religion, and its healthy hatred of Scoundrels : From the Christianity of Oliver Cromwell to that of Mr. Hesperus Fiddlestring, what a road have we travelled! Gospel according to the Platform ; Exeat Fiddlestring. Poor creatures, making .and unmaking 'Laws,' in whose souls is no image or thought of Heaven's Law: Human Statute-books, growing horrible to think of. (59.)
What to do with our criminals? An official Law-dignitary's bland perplexity, and placid discomfiture. Wonderful to hear what account we give of the punishment of our criminals: No 'revenge;' O Heavens, no! Cant moral. Cant religious. Cant political. Hunger-stricken asphyxied hearts, calling themselves 'Christian.' Woe to the People that no longer venerate, as the emblem of God himself, the aspect of Human Worth! The true ground on which to deliberately slay a disarmed fellow-man : 'Revenge,' and the ineradicable tendency to revancher oneself on the wrong-doer, to pay him what he has merited. How it shall be done? a vast question, involving immense considerations. Terrible penalties of neglecting to treat hero as hero, and scoundrel as scoundrel: Dim oblivion of Right and Wrong : World-wide maddening Misery: New astonishing Phallus-Worship, and universal Sacrament of Divorce. (61.)
The Ancient Germans, and their grim public executions. Scoundrel is scoundrel; and no soft blubbering and litanying [p.289] over him can make him a friend of this Universe. A 'didactic sermon,' as no spoken sermon could be. Except upon a basis of just rigour, sorrowful, silent, inexorable, no true Pity possible. (70.)
A worst man in England, curious to think of, whom it would be inexpressibly advantageous to lay hold of, and hang, first of all : Alas, our supreme scoundrel, alike with our supreme hero, very far from being known. Parliament, in its lawmakings, must really try to obtain some vision again. Let us to the wellheads, to the Chief Fountains of these waters of bitterness ; and there strike home and dig! {71.)
No. III. DOWNING STREET.
Ineffectuality of our Redtape Establishments: The Colonial Office, a world-wide
jungle, inhabited by doleful creatures, deaf or nearly so to human reason and
entreaty. Foreign Office and Home Office perhaps even more impracticable:
Hercules- Harlequin, the Attorney Triumphant, {he World's Busybody, these not
the parts this Nation has a turn for. Proposed curtailments, rectifications and
reformations, (p. 74.)
England's forlorn hope in Sir Robert Peel: The one likely or possible man. A
Reformed Executive in Downing Street : Not a better Talking- Apparatus, but an
infinitely better Acting-Apparatus the thing wanted. The Irish Giant advancing
unheeded upon London itself. (78.)
Two kinds of fundamental error in our Government Offices : The work ill-done;
and, what is still fataler, the wrong kind of work. For such elaborated
Idleness a stupid subaltern better than a gifted one. O for an eye that could
see in those hideous mazes, and a heart that could dare and do! (80.)
What the British Nation at this time really wants. If our Government is to be a
No-Government, what matter who administers it? The real Nimrod of
this era the rat-catcher. The mighty question. Who is to be our Premier, and
take in hand the 'spigot of taxation'? Right Honourable Zero, on his Sleswick
thunder-horse. Who made those Downing-Street Offices? No edifice of State that
stands long, but has had the wise and brave contributing their lives to it.
William Conqueror's Home Office. An English Seventy-four, and the old Seakings
and Saxon Pirates. (84.)
'Human Stupidity' the accursed parent of all our sorrows. Practical reverence
for Human Worth the outcome and essence of all true 'religions' whatsoever.
Human Intellect, the exact summary of Human Worth. Abler Men in Downing
Street; that, sure enough, would gradually remedy whatsoever has gone wrong
amongst us. The divinest, most Herculean Ten Men to be found among the English
Twenty-seven Millions. Courage ; let us strive all thitherward as towards a door
of hope! One Intellect still really human, not to be dispensed with anywhere in
the affairs of men : Only Wisdom, that can recognise wisdom, and attract it, as
with divine magnetism, from the modest corners where it lies hid. (89.)
To increase the supply of human Intellect in Downing Street, what 'method' alas!
One small Project of Improvement : Government Servants to be selected without
reference to their power of getting into Parliament : The Crown to have power to
elect a few members. Beneficent germs, which one truly wise man as Chief
Minister might ripen into living practices, invaluable to us all, A population
counting by Millions from which to choose, were a seat in Parliament not primary
: Robert Burns. All true ' Democracy' in this, that the able man be chosen, in
whatever rank he be found: A truer and truer 'Aristocracy,' or Government of the
Best. (96.)
One true Reforming Statesman ; he the preliminary of all good. A strange
feeling, to be at the apex of English affairs. This world, sohd as it looks,
made all of aerial and even of spiritual stuff. This and the other Premier seems
to take it with perfect coolness : Reflections, sufficient to annihilate any
man, [p.290] almost before starting ! Ask well, who is
your Chief Governor, for around him men like to him will infallibly gather. Time
was when an incompetent Governor could not be permitted among men. (103.)
No. IV. THE NEW DOWNING STREET.
How the European Governments came to wreck for want of Intellect. No evil, or
solecism against Nature, ever yet wrought its own cure. Intellect has to
govern, and will do it; if not in alliance, then in hostility: Every Government
absolves or convicts itself, before God and man, according as it determines
which, (p. 108.)
The old Catholic Church, in its terrestrial relations to the State : Everywhere a road upwards for human nobleness lay wide open to all men. Over Europe generally the State has died ; incapable in these years of any but galvanic life. The kind of heroes that come mounted on the shoulders of universal suffrage. England called as no Nation ever was, to summon out its Kings, and set them to their work : A New Downing Street, inhabited by the gifted; directing all its energies upon real and living interests, (111.)
The notion that Government can do nothing but 'keep the peace.' To be governed by small men, profess subjection to phantasms, not only a misfortune, but a curse and sin. Indigent Millionaires, and their owl-dreams of Pohtical Economy. Only the man of worth can recognise worth in men. How a New Downing Street might gradually come. (116.)
The Foreign Office, in its reformed state: Insignificance of recent European Wars. Our War-soldiers Industrial; doing nobler than Roman works, when fighting is not wanted of them. Ministers of Works, of Justice, of Education: Tomorrow morning they might all begin to be! (122.)
Constitutions for the Colonies, now on the anvil: 'So many as are for rebelling, hold up your hands!' Our brave fathers, by valiant blood and sweat, gained for us rich possessions in all zones; and we, wretched imbeciles, cannot do the function of administering them. Miserabler theory than that of money on the ledger for the primary rule of Empires, cannot well be propounded : England will not readily admit that her own children are worth nothing but to be flung out of doors. Canadian Parliaments, and Lumber-log Governors. Choose well your Governor; and having found him, keep him. (126.)
The Home Office, undoubtedly our grand primary concern. Were all men doing their duty, or even seriously trying to do it, there would be no Pauper : Pauperism, our Social Sin grown manifest. Our Public Life and our Private, our State and our Religion, a tissue of half-truths and whole-lies : Cicero's Roman Augurs and their divine chicken-bowels : Despicable amalgam of true and false. A complete course of scavengerism, the thing needed. The State, as it gets into the track of its real work, will find it expand into whole continents of new activity : The want of wants, more indispensable than any jewel in the crown, that of men able to command men in the ways of welldoing. (133.)
Waste-land Industrials succeeding, other kinds of Industry will be found capable of regimenting. He is a good man that can command and obey ; he that cannot is a bad. Etons and Oxfords, with their broken crumbs of mere speech: Our next set of Souls' Overseers, perhaps silent very mainly. Who of living statesmen will begin the long steep journey of Reform? Sir Robert Peel at his 'eleventh hour.' Still fataler omens. (141.)
No. V. STUMP-ORATOR.
Our deep-rooted habit of considering human talent as best of all evincing itself
in eloquent speech : Such a test liable to become the very worst ever devised.
Hard sayings for many a British reader: The talker established in [p.291]
the place of honour ; and the Doer lost and lamed in the obscure crowd.
Eloquence, and the part it now plays in our affairs, one of the gravest
phenomena, (p.146)
Universities and Schools in the old healthy Ages: The Working Man; Priest; young
Noble : The one sure method of learning anything, practical apprenticeship to
it. Not that he may speak, but that he may have something to speak of, the first
need of a man. Every word, either a note or a forged-note. Do you want a man
not to practise what he believes, then encourage him to speak it often in
words : The serviceable thing, to clip-off a bit of his eloquent
tongue. What the art of speech should be, and should not be.
(150.)
Vital lungs of Society: Methods by which men rise ; and the kind of men.
The country that can offer no career, a doomed country; nay already dead. Our
English careers to born genius twofold : Silent or unlearned career of
Industrialisms : Articulate or learned career of the three Professions. To the
gifted soul, not of taciturn, beaver nature, the field in England narrow and
surprising to an extreme : The solitary proof-feat of talk, getting rather
monotonous. Medicine, and its frightful medusa-heads of quackery: The profession
of Human Healer radically a sacred one. Law and Church : Ingenuous souls just
now shudder at the threshold of both these careers. Parliament, and its
unquestioned eligibility, if attainable. Crowded portal of Literature : Haven of
expatriated spiritualisms, vanities and prurient imbecilities. Talk with tongue
or pen ; there is in our England of the Nineteenth Century, that one method of
emergence and no other. (155.)
Not even in Parliament should the essential function by any means be talk.
Wisdom intrinsically of silent nature. Politeness, and breeding to business :
How politeness was invented: Johnson, Burns. Parliament, as a school of
manners : Seeking salvation in 'appearances.' A parliamentary bagpipe, and your
living man fled away without return. (164.)
Nature admits no lie: Most men profess to be aware of this, but few in
any manner lay it to heart. Diagnosis of a Lie, and Liar. Fail, by any sin or
misfortune, to discover what the truth of a fact is, you are lost so far as that
fact goes : Unfortunate British Parliament. Nature's silent exact Savings'-bank,
and official register, correct to the most evanescent item : Creditor, by the
quantity of veracities we have done ; Debtor, by the quantity of falsities and
errors. The practice of modern Parliaments, with Reporters sitting among them.
(170.)
A benevolent plan of reform for our benighted world : At least one generation to
pass its life in silence. Good Heavens, if such a plan were practicable, how the
chaff might be winnowed-out of every man and thing ! Eye-service, our saddest
woe of all. ' Public-speaking, 'parliamentary eloquence,' a Moloch before whom
young souls are made to pass through the fire, to come out spiritually dead.
Be not a Public Orator, thou brave young British man; not a Stump-Orator, if
thou canst help it : To speak, or to write, Nature did not peremptorily order
thee ; but to work she did. (178.)
No. VI. PARLIAMENTS.
The present Editor not one of those who expect to see the Country saved by
farther 'reforming' the reformed Parliament we have got. If the captains of the
ship are of that scandalous class who refuse to be warned, what are the
miserable crew to do? (p.182.)
The English Parliament, windy and empty as it has grown to be, at one time a quite solid serious actuality : King Rufus and his Barons : The time of the Edwards, when Parliament gradually split itself into Two Houses. The Long Parliament the first that declared itself Sovereign in the Nation. A sad gradual falling-off in modern Parliaments : A solemn Convocation of all the Stump-Orators in the Nation, to come and govern us, not seen in the earth until recently. (184.)
Two [p.292] grand modern facts, which have altered from top to bottom the function and position of all Parliaments. An Unfettered Press : Not the discussion of questions, only the ultimate voting of them, requires to go on, or can veritably go on, in St. Stephen's now. Still more important the question. King present there, or no King ? Not as a Sovereign Ruler of the Twenty-seven million British souls has the reformed Parliament distinguished itself as yet. Another most unfortunate condition, that your Parliamentary Assembly is not much in earnest to do even the best it can. Parliaments, admirable only as Advising Bodies. United States. Only Two Parliaments of any actual Sovereignty : The English Long Parliament, and the French Convention. The horoscope of Parliaments by no means cheering at present : The thing we vitally need, not a more and more perfectly elected Parliament, but some reality of a Ruling Sovereign to preside over Parliament. {187.)
Poor human beings, whose practical belief is, that if we 'vote' this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be. Blundering, impious, pretended 'laws:' Is arithmetic a thing more fixed by the Eternal than the laws of justice are? Eternal Law, silently present everywhere and everywhen. ' Voting' a thing of little value at any time : If of ten men, nine are recognisable as fools, how will you ever get a ballot-box to grind-out a wisdom from their 'votes'? (199.)
Under whatever Reformed Downing Street England be governed, its Parliament too will continue indispensable : We must set it to its real function ; and, at our peril and its, restrict it to that. Necessary to the King or Governor to know what the mass of men think upon public questions : He may thus choose his path with prudence ; and reach his aim surely, if more slowly. The Leming-rat, and its rigidly straight course nowhither. The mass of men consulted at the hustings upon any high matter, as ugly an exhibition of human stupidity as this world sees. The vulgarest vulgar, not those in ragged coats at this day ; the more the pity. Of what use towards the finding-out what it is wise to do can the ' fool's vote' be ? You have to apprise the unwise man of his road, even as you do the unwiser horse. Memorable minorities, and even small ones : Cromwell and his Puritans : Tancred of Hauteville's sons. Unit of that class, against as many zeros as you like. {203.)
What is to become of Parliament, less a question than what is to become of Downing Street. Who is slave, and eternally appointed to be governed; who free, and eternally appointed to govern. Could we entirely exclude the slave's vote, and admit only the heroic free man's vote, the ultimate New Era, and best possible condition of human affairs, had actually come. New definitions of slavery, and of freedom. To the Free Man belongs eternally the government of the world. (210.)
No. VII. HUDSON'S STATUE.
The question 'Shall Cromwell have a Statue?' A People worthy to build Statues to Cromwell; or worthy only of doing it to Hudson. Show the man you honour ; and you show what your Ideal of Manhood is, what kind of man you long inexpressibly to be. Pity Hudson's Statue was not completed and set up, so that all the world might see it : The practical English mind has its own notions of the Supreme Excellence ; and in this of Hudson there was more of real worship than is usual, (p. 216.)
If the world were not properly anarchic, this question of a Statue would be one
of the greatest and most solemn for it : Not lightly will a man give his
'reverence,' if he be still a man. A Hierarchy of Beneficences ; the
noblest man at the summit of affairs, and in every place the due gradation of
the fittest for the place : All hangs upon giving our approval aright.
How Statues are now got up. (219.)
Dismal, symbolic population of British Statues : The kind of Aristocracy Popular
Suffrage would choose for us. Hudson a King, ' elected by the people, ' as [p.293]
none other is or was : His value as a demigod ; as a maker of railways.
Answer to Jefferson Brick, the American Editor, touching overgrown worthless
Dukes, and undergrown incredible Bishops : Our ugliest anomahes, done by
universal suffrage, not by patent : Bobus of Houndsditch. This universal ousting
of imaginary Governors, to issue in the attainment of Governors who have a right
and a capacity to govern. Ballot-box and suffrage 'machine.' Alas, could we once
get Laws which were just: The Bravest of existing Men on the throne ; and
on the gibbet the veritable Supreme Scoundrel of the Commonwealth. Universal
suffrage, equivalent to abject helplessness and fiat despair. Peace ? Better war
to the knife, war till we all die, than such a 'peace'! (224.)
Hero-worship: This Universe wholly, this temporary Flame-image of the Eternal,
one beautiful and terrible Energy of Heroisms; presided over by a Divine
Nobleness, or Infinite Hero. Hypocritical Idolatries : Sets of gods or fetishes,
to which prayers are mumbled; while the real worship, or heart's love and
admiration, is elsewhere. Whom do you in your very soul admire, and strive to
imitate and emulate; is it God's servant, or the Devil's? There is no other
'religion' in the man, of the slightest moment compared with this : Immense
asthmatic spiritual Hurdygurdy. It was not 'always so,' and even till lately was
never so. (235.)
Collins's dull old Peerage-Book, properly all we English have for a National
Bible : Of these ancient peerages, a very great majority visibly had
authentic 'heroes' for their founders. One's heart is sore to think how far, how
very far all this has vanished from us. Our one steady regulated supply, the
class definable as Supreme Stump-Orators in the Lawyer department. England once
a Hierarchy : To the English modern populations. Supreme Hero and Supreme
Scoundrel, perhaps as nearly as is possible to human creatures,
indistinguishable. (239.)
High columns, raised by prurient stupidity and public delusion to gamblers and
blockheads. The so-called Christian Clerus: Brave men many of them, after
their sort ; and in a position which we may admit to be wonderful and dreadful.
But as to Statues, and the mischief they are doing, the Woods-and-Forests
really ought to interfere. (244.)
No. VIII. JESUITISM.
For some two centuries past, the genius of mankind dominated by the gospel of Ignatius. What the English reader may think of it, and of his share in it. The Spiritual, the parent and first-cause of the Practical. Thrice-baleful Universe of Cant, prophesied for these Latter Days : The Universe makes no immediate objection to be conceived in any way, The saddest condition of human affairs, where men ' decree injustice by a law.' (p. 249.)
A poor man, in our days, has many gods foisted on him : If Ignatius, worshipped by millions as a kind of god, is in eternal fact a kind of devil, surely it is pressingly expedient that men laid it awfully to heart. Ignatius Loyola, a man born greedy ; full of prurient elements from the first. On the walls of Pampeluna : A wrecked Papin's-digester. Reflections, true, salutary, and even somewhat of sacred : Agonies of newbirth. The true remedy for wrecked sensualism, to annihilate one's pruriency. Let Eternal Justice triumph on me, since it cannot triumph by me : The voice of Nature to a repentant outcast sinner turning again towards the realms of manhood; and the precept of all right Christianity too. Not so did Ignatius read the omens : The Task he fixed upon as his. Wilt thou then, at the bidding of any Pope, war against Almighty God? Frantic mortal, thy late Pighood itself is trivial in comparison ! (254 )
Precious message of salvation : Salutary nature of falsehoods, and divine authority of things doubtful. Not 'victory' for Ignatius and his black militia. Luther and Protestantism Proper : Jean Jacques [p.294] and Protestantism Improper. 'Vivaciousness' of Jesuitism. Obedience good and indispensable: Loyalty to Beelzebub; most conspicuous proof of caitiffhood within a man's possibility. This country tolerably cleared of Jesuits: Expulsion of the Jesuit Body of little avail, with the Jesuit Soul so nestled in the life of mankind everywhere. 'Cant, and even sincere Cant :' O Heaven, when a man doing his sincerest is still but canting! The coward solacement of composure and a whole skin. Deadly virus of lying ; and such an odour as the angels never smelt before. Awakening from the sleep of death into the Sorcerer's Sabbath of Anarchy. (259.)
A man's 'religion,' not the many things he tries to believe, but the few things he cannot doubt. The modern man's 'religion ;'what poor scantling of ' divine convictions' he has. A singular piece of scribble, in Sauerteig's hand, on Pig Philosophy : Pigs of sensibility and superior logical parts : Their ' religion, 'notion of the Universe, and of their interests and duties there. (266.)
The Fine Arts, by some thought to be a kind of religion : Here too the consummate flower of Consecrated Unveracity reigns supreme. The new St. Stephen's, with its wilderness of stone pepperboxes. The Fine Arts, like the coarse and every art of Man's god-given Faculty, sent hither not to fib and dance, but to speak and work. Homer's Iliad, no Fiction but a Ballad ***History: The Hebrew Bible, before all things, true, as no other Book ever was or will be. The History of every Nation an Epic and Bible, the clouded struggling image of a God's Presence. Beyond doubt the Almighty Maker made this England too ; and has been and forever is miraculously present here. What are the eternal covenants we can believe, and dare not for our life's sake but go and observe? These are our Bible, our God's Word, such as it may be. 'Miracles,' 'worships,' after their kind. No rhythmic History of England, but what we find in Shakespeare. Luxurious Europe ; with its wits, story-tellers, ballad-singers, dancing-girls : All the Fine Arts converted into after-dinner Amusements. How all things hang together ! Universal Jesuitism once lodged in the heart, you will see it in the very finger-nails by and by. (272.)
Our Exodus from Houndsditch: Yankee Gathercoal, and his strange-flashing
torch-gleams. How simple souls clamour occasionally for what they call 'a new
religion.' This Universe, in all times, the express image of the human souls,
and their thoughts and activities, who dwell there. The 'open secret,' in these
dark days a very shut one indeed. Surely this ignoble sluggishness, sceptical
torpor, is not doomed to be our final condition : Under this brutal stagnancy
there does lie painfully imprisoned some tendency which could become heroic.
(279.)
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